Public use of the internet continues to grow, with millions of people now accessing the global network. The bandwidth demanded by each of those users also continues to grow substantially—moving from simple e-mails, to graphical web pages, to full streaming video at very high resolutions. In addition, with so-called Web 2.0 applications, more data is needed to support traditional computing applications over the internet. As a result, many information providers are building large computing facilities, known as data centers, that can provide various services to internet users. Sometimes, these data centers can contain thousands of networked computers mounted in a large number of racks.
The internet backbone also needs to grow to support the additional demand from all these new users and new services. Such growth is expensive, however, because backbone routers are huge, complex machines, and running of cross-country fibers costs very much money. In addition, cross-country communication can introduce latency to communications—both because of increased distances, and because of the increased chance of losing and retransmitting packets that are sent through many routers and through long distances.
Thus, it can be beneficial to distribute computing power closer to users. As such, data centers may be moved closer to users, with relevant content sent from a central facility out to regional data centers only once, and further transmissions occurring over shorter regional links. As a result, every request from a user need not result in a transmission cross-country and through the internet backbone—network activity may be more evenly balanced and confined to local areas. Also, transient needs for computing power may arise in a particular area. For example, a military presence may be needed in an area, a natural disaster may bring a need for computing or telecommunication presence in an area until the natural infrastructure can be repaired or rebuilt, and certain events may draw thousands of people who may put a load on the local computing infrastructure. Often, such transient events occur near water, such as a river or an ocean. However, it can be expensive to build and locate data centers, and it is not always easy to find access to necessary (and inexpensive) electrical power, high-bandwidth data connections, and cooling water for such data centers.